Big News for the McLain's

So......last time I blogged, I wrote that we were growing weary of the wait for a match in our adoption. We were led to a Facilitator that came highly recommended to us. We prayed about joining with them and discussed it and prayed some more....and finally we both felt "peace" about contacting them.
So I sent them an e-mail on July 11th to inquire about how they work. She sent me a detailed e-mail, contract and application that explained everything and left it on our hands. I sent back a quick e-mail explaining that I would look it over and we would get back to her. I included some of the "logistics" of what situations we were open to. She then sent me an e-mail to contact her because she had a situation that she needed someone for and it might work for us. So...I called her, of course. She said that she had a birthmom set to deliver in 9 days to a baby boy, explained some of the details and asked if we were interested.I called Joe and ran it by him and we both agreed we wanted to go for it. So I called her back and we were officially being "shown" to her. That just means that she has a life book of our family and she gets to review it and decide if we are the family for her baby. We didn't hear anything a couple of days later....so I called our agency. She said that we hoped to hear soon....but that she had been shown several profiles and had turned them all down. This made us pretty sure we would just be another of the turn-downs. So we prepared our hearts to hear a "no" on this one.
The next day, she called again and said that she had not heard anything yet, but that they had another hard to place situation that we might be interested in if the newborn didn't work out. This is a 21 month old little boy in Florida in great health. So we said yes. Immediately, we had a burdened heart for the little boy.
So...to make a long story short, it doesnt look like the newborn is gonna work......but we are still in the "loop" for the little boy. The birth parents are looking at 3 families (1 of them is us). Originally, we were supposed to have an answer on Tuesday....but they asked to wait until today. Tuesday morning we got the call that they weren't sure yet....and we were disappointed that we would have to wait. But then an hour later as I started to work on all the paperwork that we would need to give to the state of Florida and Georgia to bring him home (ICPC), we knew why God had stalled it. Our fingerprints from the FBI were expired. They have to be updated every 12 months for adoption. Ours were about 15 months old. This is usually a 8 week process so I panicked thinking this would mean we couldn't adopt this little boy. Let me also add that I had been to the doctor that morning with my son. He has bronchitis, double ear infection and a very sore throat. He was VERY needy and not happy with mommy being taken away from him for all these phone calls. So....that day was really hard...but I called our agency and she told me to go to the police station THAT day and get fingerprinted (and Joe too) and then find a UPS store and overnight them to the FBI. She gave me the name of someone that she knew there that would help us get them fast if we explained the situation. Needless to say.....this took ALL day, meaning my poor, sick Aiden couldn't even take his normal nap and he probably needed a 4 hour one on this particular day. So as I called the agency to catch her up Tues evening, we both realized that ALL of our paperwork was expired because our former agency hadn't required a lot of the paperwork. That is ALOT of paperwork. Its usually a 3 month process at best....we had Wed and Thurs to get it done..
So Wed morning, I called her to get instructions on what all to do. She told me it wouldn't be easy but we could do it with a lot of prayer that in every situation (fingerprints, background checks, child abuse clearances, domestic violence clearances, homestudies from 2 agencies, sexual offender clearances, insurance info updates, tax forms, budget info updates, and the list goes on,) that our paperwork would fall into the right hands of people that would be compassionate toward us and bend their "policies." Everyone has policies about how long it will take to get these things back. Most are around 2 to 4 weeks.....we had 2 days. Let me add that I woke up getting sick too and had only slept one hour because my son was so sick that we had to hold him up to sleep. Also, my son was put on prednisone (which makes him climb the walls) so he was still sick and VERY, VERY hyper. I think I saved my son's life about 5 times yesterday as was literally climbing everything (the outside of the staircase to the top and hanging off, the high cabinet where all the medicine is, he snuck outside and climbed on the very top of my car and was jumping up and down.....and oh so much more. Thank You, God, for watching out for him.
So I got about half of the work done with my husband helping me from work......at the end of the day, I crashed! Really, Really hard. Emotionally, Physically, Mentally....it was bad.
Then this morning, I woke up very sick. I was up at 4 am with chills and aches and NO voice.....and I had to have a voice today! So by about 8am I got my voice back enough to talk a little. My son was still climbing the walls so most of that voice was used on him. So my wonderful, awesome husband took a HUGE load of the work today (along with doing his job) and I did the running around and made a couple of phone calls.....everything was looking good at 3:30 pm. Then our agency called to say, the birthmother had chosen (she didnt say who yet) but that the birthfather had not had a chance to look at the profiles and he wanted until Sunday night. I was a little sad that we were once again gonna have to wait but I knew the extra day would be helpful to get a lot of the forms that we submitted today, approved and ready to send to the agency. Can I just say that we got EVERYTHING (except for the FBI fingerprints) done today and ready to send to the agency tomorrow......that is all GOD- it just doesnt happen. Then @ 4PM, we got some bad news. Remember the contact at the FBI that our agency knew? The one that would help us get these clearances today....no 8 weeks from now. Remember this is an immediate,already born child. There is no pregnancy wait time. Well, she called me to say they couldn't expedite them because of their casework load. You know, understaffed and overworked. So I said okay, hung up the phone and started to cry. I kept thinking, "okay,Lord, this wasn't our baby.I know you know what is best for us." Then the phone rang, it was the FBI again.....the same person I spoke with 5 minutes earlier. She explained that there is another company that is in the process of taking over the prints for them. She gave me their number, saying that she didn't think it would work, but I could try. At this point, I called our agency...who said she would call the number and see what she could do. 20 minutes later my agency called me back and said "well, this is a God thing." She said the lady said that they weren't actually taking it over for 2 more weeks and they couldn't help. Courtney told her, "thanks, anyway," we were just needing them like yesterday. The lady said to hold on. When she came back to the phone, she said they would do this for us this one time...a VERY big exception. So she can have them by Monday.......and Monday is the day that we were set to receive the birthfather's answer.......so if we are picked, everything has lined up for us.....ONLY GOD could have turned 3 months into 3 days.......He is SO awesome.
I know this is a long e-mail but I wanted to record the details. I have regretted that I didn't record ALL of the details with our first adoption as it was God ordained and God protected as well. Truth is, even if we dont get picked for this little boy, my GOD has gotten us ready (without having to go on hold) to accept a child any day!